A Dose of Reality

A coworker sent me this an excellent article reminding us that analysis still has merit in the era of "fast" machines, open standards, and "cheap" programmers. It's long, but take some time to read through this. The upshot: These are all things that require you to think about bytes, and they affect the big top-level decisions we make in all kinds of architecture and strategy. This is why my view of teaching is that first year CS students need to start at the basics, using C and building their way up from the CPU. I am actually physically disgusted that so many computer science programs think that Java is a good introductory language, because it's "easy" and you don't get confused with all that boring string/malloc stuff but you can learn cool OOP stuff which will make your big programs ever so modular. This is a pedagogical disaster waiting to happen. I'll add that the disaster isn't waiting to happen, it's in progress already, in schools across the country.

posted at: 16:18 | permanent link to this entry

Children of the Sun

There are numerous slants and derogatory terms for all the remaining candidates in this year's presidential election; Sen. Obama has garnered one of the better memes, due to the lemming run that has propelled his candidacy. The premise: the Obama candidacy has formed a cult of illogical devotees, who in spite of all attempts to reason, will, one magical day, follow their candidate to the Center of the Sun. This meme holds far more comedic value than most, particularly since Obama is marching on the way to a nomination. By extension, I dub Senator Obama's lemmings the "Children of the Sun". The White House is, presumably, but a small step for solarkind.

posted at: 15:16 | permanent link to this entry

Hi, we're the Internet, KTHXBI

Last night, MSNBC found out the hard way what happens when half the Internet decides to stop in for dinner. At least they made an adjustment at some point, to switch to a lower-quality stream, to accomodate the demand.

posted at: 15:07 | permanent link to this entry

Reposessing the GOP?

Yesterday, some "talk radio" mouthpiece ran his mouth at a McCain rally, and was apologized for. Today, said mouthpiece is whining about being thrown under the bus, and it's music to my ears. This is so absolutely fortunate, I have to wonder if the mouthpice wasn't set up as an object lesson to the rest of his ilk, and to the electorate as a whole: There is no room for harpies on the Straight Talk Express, and there is no room for the cancer those harpies spread.

posted at: 14:19 | permanent link to this entry

Oh Hell No, He Didn't.

All hell is currently breaking loose over xkcd's unfair treatment of fruit, especially the banishment of watermelon and oranges to the "difficult" side of the 'ease of use' axis, and the insinuation that said fruits are mildly (or not) tasty. Full-on Fruit Fight commences here.

posted at: 01:29 | permanent link to this entry

Today's topic for discussion is:

[petition] Please, Shane...cut your hair.

posted at: 01:23 | permanent link to this entry